344 BULLETIN OF THE BUBEAU OF FISHERIES 



Habits. — Although this fish is as common in the Gulf as the other sea snail, if 

 not more so, all that is known of its habits there is that it lives on rocky or stony 

 bottom, usually among the stalks and roots of kelp to which it sometimes clings fast, 

 a habit which European writers describe as common. In British waters it is often 

 to be found hiding in the tiny pools of water left under pebbles by the ebbing tide, 

 and probably a search of the beaches would reveal it in similar situations in the Gulf 

 of Maine but of this we find no definite report. Small ones often live inside the 

 shells of the giant scallop (Pecten magellanicus) , and it is our impression (though 

 not backed by any definite evidence) that this is a more usual habit with this than 

 with the preceding species. At any rate, W. F. Clapp informs us that it is the rule 

 to find at least one or two sea snails in a bushel or so of scallops, and fishermen have 

 told us that one or the other species of sea snail (probably both) is found in scallop 

 shells on Georges Bank where the scallops are plentiful locally. 



Food. — Small Crustacea, chiefly amphipods and shrimps of various kinds, 

 have been found in stomachs of striped sea snails on both sides of the Atlantic, 

 and it also feeds on small shellfish and was described by Fabricius 2 as eating small 

 fish fry and algae. 



Breeding habits. — This fish is a winter spawner in the western Atlantic, as it is 

 in the eastern Atlantic, females full of roe occurring at Woods Hole in December 

 and January. Spawning continues until well into the spring, for the collection 

 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology contains a female distended with eggs 

 taken on April 1 many years ago. Females with running roe have likewise been 

 taken in Scandinavian waters in May, and larvae only 5.5 mm. long, which we towed 

 near the Isles of Shoals on July 22 and in Massachusetts Bay on August 31 in 1912, 

 must have been hatched from eggs spawned at least as late as May if not June. 



The eggs 3 (about 1.5 mm. — 0.06 inch — in diameter) sink and stick together 

 in bunches, which usually adhere to hydroids, seaweeds, or other objects like those 

 of the sea snail, and apparently incubation is about as long as with the latter —  

 that is, at least a month. The larvae are about 5.5 mm. long at hatching and they 

 live pelagic until upwards of 16 mm. long, at which size the sucking disk is well 

 developed. 



This little fish is of no commercial importance. 



THE SEA ROBINS OR GURNARDS. FAMILY TRIGLID^ 4 



The sea robins and their European relatives, the gurnards, suggest sculpins 

 in their broad heads, slender bodies, large fanlike pectoral fins, the presence of two 

 separate dorsal fins (a spiny and a soft rayed), and in the location of the ventral 

 fins under the pectorals, but their entire heads are armored with rough bony and 

 spiny plates. The Gulf of Maine is the northern limit of the family on the Atlantic 

 coast of America. 



1 Fauna Groenlandica, 1780. 



3 Ehrenbaum (Nordisches Plankton, Band 1, 1905-1909, p. 112) gives an account of eggs and larva; in European waters, from 

 which these lines are condensed. 



' The so-called "flying" robin ( Cephalacanthus volitans) was included by Holmes (1862) and by Adams (1873) in their lists 

 of Maine and New Brunswick fishes, but in neither case was a definite locality record given. As it has never been reported 

 north of Cape Cod before or since we do not feel obliged to include it as a Gulf of Maine species. It would attract attention at 

 once by its tremendous rounded batlike pectoral fins, which reach almost to the base of the caudal when folded, and by the pres- 

 ence of a long spine on each cheek reaching back past the ventral fins. 



